Is there a male menopause? As a man in his mid-50s, I have recently become aware of getting older. Increasing age has had a curious effect on my psyche. I am noticing, on an almost daily basis, that I am thinking, feeling and behaving in ways that are starkly different from my youth and earlier adulthood. I will share these experiences on this blog and hope others will join me in describing their own age-related quirks and oddities. I can't be the only one at this "funny age", can I??

Tuesday, 13 September 2016

I’m sure we’ve all had jobs in our youth or young adulthood
that trigger a smile when we reminisce about them. As a naïve 19-year-old, I
recall a temporary summer job during college vacation that instantly rendered
me the most unpopular person in the whole factory.

It was 1978, during my 12-week summer recess from
university. To earn beer money I needed to work, so my mother helpfully found
me a job at the local textile mill where she was employed as a weaver.
Initially, my efforts were directed to general labouring tasks – such as
scraping grease off the weaving-shed floor – but after a couple of weeks the
boss called me into his office.

‘I’d like you to become my “time and motion” man,’ he said.

I was unsure what this role involved. Was it something to do
with shit? A toilet monitor, perhaps? Or would I be running errands for him,
maybe nipping out to the shop to buy his cigarettes? Maybe he wanted me for his
bitch, to bugger me over his work desk whenever the urge arose? Whatever the
job involved, it would surely be a step up from chiselling a year’s worth of
detritus from between the power looms.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘When can I start?’

The boss was engaged in a mission to boost productivity. The
factory was not churning out enough cloth and he wanted to know why. My –
terribly important – role required me to sit on the top of a step ladder (like
a tennis umpire) in the main weaving shed with a clipboard in one hand and a
stopwatch in the other. This room contained 10 looms that rattled away
transforming threads of yarn into linen, each machine manned by a responsible
weaver. When a loom was active, a green light flashed above the machine; when
stopped, a red light flashed. My job was to record the cumulative time that
each machine was dormant.

As one might imagine, my presence in the weaving shed was
not generally welcomed by the weavers; if their machines were stopped for any
length of time, the management would ask questions. Nevertheless, I took to my
‘spying for the bosses’ role seriously, and was soon transformed into a
Gestapo-like overseer of the inmates. Each time that red light flashed, my
stopwatch started and remained on until the green light was restored; the
period of inactivity was then noted on my chart.

Throughout each day of employment in this lofty position, a typical
interaction went something like this:

WEAVER: What stoppages
have you got for loom 7 this morning?

ME: (scrutinising my chart, my lips pursed in readiness for
delivering bad news) Inactive on just the
one occasion between 8.14 am and 8.35 am, that’s 21 minutes in total.

WEAVER: But that
shouldn’t count. It wasn’t my fault – the warehouse bloke was slow bringing me
my yarn and I ran out.

ME: Sorry, pal, but
there is not a column on my chart for explanations. My task is to solely record
the period of inactivity.

After a few days in the role I even noticed that a couple of
the workers would strategically position themselves in front of their lights,
obstructing my view, thereby requiring me to descend from my stepladder and
strut through the weaving shed to (invariably) discover their red bulb
flashing; the subsequent dramatic flash of my pencil on chart screamed the
message, ‘you can’t fool me’.

My ‘time-and-motion’ role lasted two weeks, after which I
returned to removing grease and other debris from the factory floor. To their
eternal credit, none of the weavers held a grudge and I received no criticism
in the aftermath. Come to think of it, they didn’t say much to me at all. And,
now I look back, there did seem to be a sharp increase in number of accidental
spillages that required my attention. And my break-time cup of tea acquired a
strange yellowy-green tinge and a whiff of ammonia … …